When you need money the most, your funders will sign treaties with the aliens.

The first country to drop funding is always the one that gave the most money.

As soon as you get a new base built, it will be attacked.

As soon as you get a new base fully equipped and operational, UFO activity in that area will drop to zero.

If your fully developed base with 12 Missile Defences is successfully weathering a retaliation mission every couple days, the 1-in-30 battleship that makes it through will inevitably do so when all your experienced soldiers are out on missions.

The more money you've saved, the higher the chance the aliens will do something that forces you to waste it.

The amount of money you lose is proportional to how badly you need whatever you were saving up for.

Exponentially so, proportional to how dangerous the target is. Like a Sectopod that's now flanking several soldiers.

If a soldier's chance to hit is 100%, he won't do enough damage to kill the alien.

If a soldier's chance to hit is 100%, the game will glitch and turn that full-face Alloy Cannon blast into a spray of harmless confetti.

The left mouse button is context sensitive; it will always do exactly what you didn't want it to.

If a soldier's a heavy, he/she is going to have terrible accuracy.

The range and blast radius of a heavy's rocket launcher will be a few tiles away from the nearest alien.

Your heavy will never be in range to fire off a rocket.

If a soldier's a sniper, he/she is going to have terrible accuracy FOR MOST OF THE GAME.

A sniper will have squad sight on either a heavily wooded UFO crash/landing sight or a Terror Mission with one or two buildings that cover the entire map.

If a soldier's an assault, he/she is going to have terrible accuracy EVEN AT POINT BLANK RANGE.

If you activate Rapid Fire, both shots will miss a point blank Sectopod (Who has only eight health bars left) despite the second shot's hit chance being 85%.

If a soldier's a support, he/she is going to have terrible accuracy WITH ANYTHING BUT A S.C.O.P.E. AND A LIGHT PLASMA RIFLE.

If an alien's chance to hit is >1%, he will hit.

If an alien's chance to hit is <1%, he will destroy your full cover.

If an alien's mind control chance is >1%, it will work.

When aiming at an Ethereal with the last shot of your turn, it will reflect it.

Especially if that soldier has only 1 HP.

If the vehicle that your soldier is dashing to for cover can be set on fire, it will be.

That is, if the soldier survives the alien Overwatch shot that will set the vehicle on fire.

If so, then the vehicle's explosion will finish him/her off.

Not to forget that this specific soldier, was your Colonel who had been with you since the first mission.

Your soldier will always have the exact amount of health for a vehicle to blow him up.

You will always reveal new enemies on your last move of the turn.

Who will then take up flanking positions behind anyone who dashed.

The more soldiers who perform an Overwatch reaction shot against a single alien, the more likely they will all miss.

Soldiers who hit the alien will barely kill the alien.

The alien, in turn, will kill your highest-ranking soldier.

After killing the highest-ranking soldier, the other aliens will come in and mop everyone else up.

When you have your whole squad on overwatch they will all shoot one floater.

And then all die to his Chryssalid buddy.

Your Revive spec medic will always be the one critically wounded.

When trying to capture a commander with one stunner, he will be the one MCed,

Aliens will always hit soldier's hunkering down behind high cover.

The alien will do just enough damage to not kill him, but to cause him to panic.

The panicking soldier will kill a soldier and start a panic chain.

Panicking soldiers will always have 100% to hit.

Smoke grenades will always improve alien accuracy.

Mutons and Floaters will always throw grenades into smoke.

If a soldier can panic, it will.

Soldiers that panic will aim for the highest ranking officer he can see.

Even behind high cover, on a higher elevation, and covered by a smoke grenade, a panicking rookie will still be able to kill the "protected" Colonel.

Rockets will always fly off target.

ESPECIALLY when you squad is surrounded by explosive vehicles and forklifts.

At a gas station

Then everything will explode

Then everything will explode and everyone will panic

Even your SHIVs

And they will shoot your highest-ranked soldier

And he will die

He will also have the psionic gift

He also has one of the highest starting and leveling Will/Aim scores you ever got, in any playthrough.

And he/she will also be named after you.

And he/she will be carrying your only medic kit.

Aliens will position themselves right outside the radius of a grenade throw.

If a grenade can clip through and explode harmlessly under ground while you are trying to aim it, it will.

When it is time to face Sectopods or Cyberdiscs, your HEAT ammo heavies will not be with you.

When it is time to face Sectopods or Cyberdiscs, your HEAT ammo heavies will miss every shot.

When it is time to face Muton Elites, your psionics will not be with you.

Your soldiers are always one grid point away from moving to safely flank an alien.

When a large UFO lands and you assault with your elite squad you will fight 3 Floaters, 3 Sectoids and a Sectoid Commander.

When a moderate alien abduction comes up and you assault with a squad comprised of your Col. Sniper, squaddies, and rookies for training purposes, you will fight 9 Mutons (who will each throw their grenades asap), a Cyberdisc, and 2 Drones you just can't seem to hit.

Even when you use the rookie to scout ahead, he will always stumble on no less than every enemy on the map on a single turn, who will then, with most of the laws stated above, wipe your elite squad before you can say Jenkins.

You decide to research offensive tech first and the Arc Thrower later only to find that Sectoids have been removed from the alien roster. But after killing 7 Mutons on a map you decide to zap the last two for their weapons only to have the last group be a trio of Sectoids.

The Overseer will only appear when you have no Firestorms.

When you build your firestorm with dodge matrix, fusion lance, and uplink targeting, the Overseer will appear in the continent your new Firestorm is NOT stationed in

Your MCed alien will always run out of usable turns before they can bust the asses off of some of their little alien friends.

ALWAYS

Especially on the final mission of the entire game.

MCed aliens will always activate no less than two squads that were just behind them.

Your sniper with Snap Shot will never be useful for anything, ever.

Your sniper with Squadsight will never be in a good position.

And when he is, a tree will block his line of sight to finish off that one alien flanking your soldiers.

The alien with a grenade will go first. He will toss the grenade , without moving, negating any troopers on Overwatch, and removing cover from you forward trooper.

Next alien will kill your now-exposed trooper.

You will then have to wait 2-3 minutes for the other 9 or so Aliens to take their turn and batter your remaining troops.

Also, it's been 5 rounds since you last saved.

The range for a soldier flying with Archangel Armor will always be "One less than it takes to get into cover, or out of range."

On a Battleship raid, there will always be one alien that runs away, forcing you to have to chase them down.

Backwards.

The game has no problem sending and activating every alien squad in an Abductor or Supply Barge at you in 1 turn.

If not, that's because the high-level alien squad somehow noticed you from the other side of the ship.

The council mission reward will always be either what you don't need, or not enough of what you do.

When fighting Thin Men, you will always activate 2 squads at a time.

When fighting Floaters, they will always Launch to flank just tiles away from your Sniper. No soldier will be close enough to help her.

When fighting Mutons, you will activate a squad after you have finished moving at least two soldiers. Who you placed right next to each other.

If you think two soldiers were just far enough apart to not both be hit by 1 grenade: turns out they weren't.

Both of their cover is now gone, fyi.

When fighting Chryssalids, they will always be at least close enough to hit your soldiers from a diagonal tile, if not closer.

When fighting Cyberdiscs, when they are open, your hardest-hitting soldier will not be able to attack them.

Because it opened up to kill said soldier in the previous turn.

When fighting Sectopods, the answer to "Which soldier are they going to fire at?" The answer is always "the one taking cover behind something explosive."

On the rare chance that it's Chest Cannon misses, the shot will still hit something explosive.

Specifically, something that another soldier is taking cover behind.

Whom it will then fire upon.

When fighting a Sectopod, after your two troops have been battered by both Chest Cannon blasts despite being behind full cover and in the middle of a smoke grenade cloud, one moves and triggers a Reaction Shot.

When fighting an Ethereal, it will either:

Be in a different room than usual.

Become activated when you pass within 10 feet of the door.

Become activated when your last turn is to MC an Elite Muton or Heavy Floater that would be flanking it's buddies.

Which it will then immediately kill.

Your first shot with a shiny new weapon will miss.

Despite bipods being visible on several weapons, your soldiers do not seem to recognise their existence for steadying and making more accurate shots.

Your Support with Sprint and a Skeleton Suit or Ghost Armor will always be one movement short of saving a civilian.

Your soldier will make a crazy-ass, low-percentage, gun-pointing-the-wrong-way-for-some-reason Overwatch shot with your currently-most powerful weapon.... on a wounded Sectoid.

At the point in the game when you have all continents armed with Firestorms all with Fusion Lances (Highly unlikely, especially considering the laws above) that is the only time when the Aliens give up on sending the big UFOs and start sending small scouts

On a Battleship raid, you send in a rookie to investigate the main room, thus activating all 20+ Aliens who just "happened" to spawn in there. They will then all hide, and when you think yourself so clever for taking up positions for multi-pronged attack on the main room, it turns out, they were all on Overwatch.

And yes, each Alien is just so positioned so that each one of your soldiers will have a chance to get shot at.

This will occur more often on Ironman Mode.

On Impossible Difficulty.

It turns out, this was also supposed to be the day that you got the only Psionic Soldier you ever found got strong enough to become the volunteer.

Afterwards, the game will glitch so that you will never find another Psionic Soldier in your whole playthrough

Not that it matters, your entire elite squad got wiped out, when they had all their fancy armor and weapons.

"Don't shoot the Elerium, don't shoot the Elerium---- shit."

"Don't blow up the power source, don't blow up the power source ---- crap."

"Blow power source! Blow! Blow! ---- come on!"

Your soldier will miss the alien and shoot the meld instead.

Especially if you have them flanked.

When your favorite soldier gets critically injured, you clear out the Muton Elite that hurt him. Too bad there is a group of sectoids all the way across the map.

It will take a full turn of dashing for your Sprinter support in a Skeleton Suit to reach them

They will all proceed to hide behind full cover just out of your sight.

When you finally see them for your Squadsight Sniper with Double Tap will hit two of them, however, there are three sectoids

Not that it matters, they were all on overwatch, and considering the laws above, they will all get critical shots on your soldier, and kill her

That is, IF you find them.

Have Frag Grenades? Any aliens in range will have four HP left.

Alien Grenades or Mind Fray? Six.

And it will be your only viable action: any attempts at firing a gun will miss.

C'mon: it's not even out yet, but you just know that the only time you'll have the Needle Grenade with you, aliens WILL take cover in such a way that only ONE would be affected by it at any time.

Speaking of Enemy Within: you shall soon become familiar with the sound of exploding Meld canisters.

Which is Dr. Vahlen annoying voiceover.

Two words: naughty tentacles.

Alien: "You brought a soldier with a Med-kit, I'll just Critically wound him then..."

"Ooh look, the last meld canister.. and..... that's a group of Muton Elites... And a Cyberdisc... or three"

Need 5 more Meld? Check out that Heavy Floater with only one health left!

Looks like it's running away, no biggie, you'll just follow it.

And activate its Mechtoid Buddies!

While you are almost finished with Confounding Light, you have one turn left to activate the train, too bad the only soldier that can make it is being Overwatch-camped by that Muton who was just air-dropped.

Even though that move would have required a dash!

He was also an assault that was gonna get promoted that mission. Guess which Rank.

The mission where your Squaddie Sniper levels up is alaways the mission that Sqaud Sight would have been supremely useful for.

Yes, Meld Canisters provide full cover. If you're actually using them for that, you have only yourself to blame.

Enemy Within. Because Sectopods really needed the ability to outright ignore half of all incoming damage.

AND be able to freely and deliberatley target your cover: "That'ssssssssssssssssssss a nice wall you got there~!"

Your Heavy will never be in a good spot to launch a mission/life-saving rocket.

Eventually, you'll fire it, because "might as well."

Then, and only then, on the next turn, will they be in the perfect situation to fire that shot you just wasted.

Training Roulette:

You'll either get abilites that're near-useless to that class, or

You'll get high-tier abilities on the same Ranking, forcing you to choose between them.

Doubly so if they're abilites that would otherwise work well together.

The game will also pick the most useless skill for that soldier when he gets promoted to Major, like close combat specialist on your sniper.

Damage Roulette:

Any time you need to do just enough damage to weaken an alien so that you have the maximum capture chance, you'll kill it instead. Maybe even crit it.

Any time you need to very definitely kill an alien (like the Chryssalid that wants to eat your Medic) you'll knock it down to 1hp.

The chance of this occurring increases significantly if this is the last action of your turn.

Any time the aliens shoot at your soldiers they'll do the maximum possible damage, especially if they're in cover and not flanked.

Any time the aliens shoot at your SHIVs they'll do the minimum possible damage... unless that SHIV is being used as cover.

Hey, see that high-ground, full cover spot right over there? That looks like a great place to attack those aliens from. Go on over, pal.

Whoops, now they're out of line-of-sight. Tough break there, buddy.

If you find yourself needing Revive, you're doing something wrong. Too bad you always need it thanks to all of the laws stated above.

After spending some 3-5 rounds setting up a nice blitzkreig for the bridge of a UFO, just when you're ready to open the door, the alien CO pod will 'teleport' either halfway across the map, or in the perfect spot to counterattack.

This includes any other escorting pods, after the CO pod takes the Alien turn to open every door, revealing every soldier.

The soldier with the arc-thrower will always be in the opposite direction that an alien you're trying to capture decides to run in.

Followed by spending the rest of the mission chasing the alien like the LAPD. Benny Hill theme optional, but recommended.

The international symbol of the red cross on med kits is apparently the Intergalatic symbol for "Shoot me first."

Any UFO that crashes into the ocean will be in a heavily forested area.

The last alien alive will be a cloaked Seeker, that is now panicked and running away, in a large map. Good #&@%ing luck finding it.

Or hasn't panicked, but it's a Terror Mission and the lone Seeker's AI has decided to kill as many civilians as possible before going after your agents. But if you split the team up to rescue more at once...

If an alien hides behind something explosive, one of several things will keep you from taking advantage of it:

Either you don't want to blow up the object,

Or a soldier is in the blast zone,

Especially if they're out of move, or there's no other safe place to move to.

Or you don't want to destroy it's equipment/fragments.

Or two of the above.

Or all three.

The farther and more obtusely placed a Meld canister is, the more likely it is that stray fire will destroy it from the other end of the map.

Trying to overwatch-spam to let Adaptive Bone Marrow heal non-armor HP? Here, have a crit to the face.

Courtesy of that wounded Sectoid that either only took 1 step into your POV, or didn't move at all.

You will have the perfect Overwatch trap set up.

You will have a pod you didn't know was there walk into it.

You will batter the approaching aliens to a bloody pulp.

You will have the game lock up in Alien Activity.

You will have your last save be just before this. Any attempt to Overwatch Trap again will result in a lock up, again.

Your full 6-man team of one specific nationality will be carved up by an Ethereal MCing half of them and deflecting all your plasma shots.